St Martin's Church is an active Orthodox church, in the Antiochia
Archdiocese of the British Isles and Ireland
in the city of

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

, England. It is recorded in the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, an ...

as a designated Grade II*

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The church stands in the centre of the city, near the

town hall In local government, a city hall, town hall, civic centre (in the UK or Australia), guildhall, or a municipal building (in the Philippines), is the chief administrative building of a city, town, or other municipality. It usually houses ...

History

The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

and the tower of the church date from the 12th century. The

aisle An aisle is, in general, a space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, certain types of buildings, such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parl ...

s, the

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building withi ...

s, and the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

were added in the 14th century. The tower was damaged in 1648 during the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

, and has never been repaired. Following this damage, the church fell into disrepair, and in 1748 the historian

Philip Morant Philip Morant (6 October 1700 – 25 November 1770) was an English clergyman, author and historian. Education He was educated at John Roysse's Free School in Abingdon (now Abingdon School) and Pembroke College, Oxford, eventually taking his m ...

wrote that it was in a ruinous condition and that no services were being held in it. A considerable restoration took place during the late 19th century, during which the architect

Giles Gilbert Scott Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (9 November 1880 – 8 February 1960) was a British architect known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and d ...

revealed the

wagon roof A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

in the chancel. An ambitious plan of restoration was later prepared by Rev Ernest Geldart, but it was never realised. The church then became neglected again, and in 1953 it was declared redundant. The church was used by a theatre group between 1957 and 1987, but by the latter date it had become structurally unsafe. It then continued to deteriorate until it was

vested In law, vesting is the point in time when the rights and interests arising from legal ownership of a property is acquired by some person. Vesting creates an immediately secured right of present or future deployment. One has a vested right to an ...

in the Churches Conservation Trust in 1996. By this time some emergency repairs had been carried out, which were financed by English Heritage. The Trust then continued to repair the building, planning this in two phases. In the first phase, the church was made dry and stable. The second phase involved cleaning the interior of the church, including the wall paintings, limewashing the remainder of the walls that had been painted black by the theatre company, refurbishing the

vestry A vestry was a committee for the local secular and ecclesiastical government for a parish in England, Wales and some English colonies which originally met in the vestry or sacristy of the parish church, and consequently became known colloquiall ...

, and providing wheelchair access. This work was supported by a grant from the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

and was completed in 2003. The work was granted a Colchester Civic Trust award later in that year. The church remains consecrated. As of January 2022, the church was sold to the local St Helen's Chapel Antiochian Parish and is now used by them.

Architecture

St Martin's is constructed in

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

rubble Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture; undressed especially as a filling-in. Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as 'brash' (compare cornbrash)."Rubble" def. 2., "Brash n. 2. def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionary ...

and it has tiled roofs. The truncated tower and the nave are

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 10th and 11th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norm ...

in style. Many

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

stones have been incorporated into the walls of the tower and the nave. Internally, at the apex of the arch of the chancel roof is the carving of a

green man The Green Man is a legendary being primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that occurs every spring. The Green Man is most commonly depicted in a sculpture, or other representation of a face which is ...

. Two glazed plaques of

encaustic tile Encaustic tiles are ceramic tiles in which the pattern or figure on the surface is not a product of the glaze but of different colors of clay. They are usually of two colours but a tile may be composed of as many as six. The pattern appears inla ...

s, surviving from Geldart's aborted restoration, are in the aisles.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Colchester, St Martin's Church Grade II* listed churches in Essex Church of England church buildings in Colchester (town) English churches with Norman architecture English Gothic architecture in Essex

History

Architecture

See also

References